If somebody were to have a look through the photographs on my mobile phone, they might be surprised to find a naked photograph in there (and not a self-portrait.) Some people, mostly those who don’t know my so well, might then assume that I keep it there for some form of sexual gratification – and they’d be entirely wrong.
The real explanation is far more heartwarming: I keep it as a body-confidence resource for myself. You see, there are certain things about myself which I occasionally feel a little insecure about – I’m not going to go into the details just now, but the same features I perceive as flaws on myself, are also present on my friend’s body. This then completely neutralises any insecurity because I don’t think my friend looks ‘bad’ and so how can I perceive the same aspects as ‘flaws’ on myself? I can’t.
Since then, I’ve had a great deal more body confidence and it’s nice. It’s a shame that our culture has such taboos around nudity, as I believe that problems related to self-image and confidence would be significantly rarer, if we saw people we know naked regularly. Having said that, I totally understand it: a few years ago, I was completely disgusted by all nudity – at least now I can see that I was wrong to feel that way.
Of course, another nice aspect of this is that they trusted me enough to share it with me – which reminds me; I suppose I could also have titled this blog post “The Time I Added a Password on My Phone” because even though I’m no expert when it comes to GDPR and privacy laws, it feels like common courtesy not to leave it laying around for anybody to pry upon.